Abstract

Arthur Miller's The Crucible dramatizes what happens when a government's authority and a church's doctrine become one, and this perspective piece uses the play to read contemporary church-state relations. Literary analysis of Puritan Salem is set beside three case studies arranged along a spectrum that runs from constitutional separation to theocracy. At one end, Stone v. Graham shows a court enforcing First Amendment neutrality by striking down Kentucky's mandate that public-school classrooms display the Ten Commandments. At the other, Taliban-governed Afghanistan shows religious law operating as state law, with severe limits on women's education, employment, and movement. Project 2025 sits between the two, an instance of indirect but consequential religious influence on proposed United States policy. Across the play and the cases the paper finds the same pattern: when theology steers the legal system, fear spreads, due process erodes, and injustice becomes systemic. Separating church from state, the author concludes, is what keeps governance equitable and individual rights secure.